Delicate Pancake Packages, A Stony Throne, and Poubelle

Thursday, October 11.

Today is my last day in Roscoff. Tomorrow I drive back to check out of the mill, and then to Paris to return my car. It’s gorgeous here this morning, all blue sky and sun, so I am taking the day off.

there are salt scrubs...and a massage with oysters and rose petals. Oysters?

I have consolidated my luggage to two small bags and walk to the post office where I mail 4 boxes home to myself (an extra pair of jeans, my hiking boots…these things are heavy and I don’t need them anymore). Feeling considerably lighter, in more ways than one, I stop for breakfast at “La Creperie Jaunes” (the yellow pancake house). Lace curtains hang in the windows, cheery yellow and white checked cloths top the tables and yellow pendant lights hang from the ceiling. A very happy place! I order a buckwheat crepe with ham and cheese ( fromage-jambon) and the melted cheese inside oozes just a little as I cut into it. For dessert I have a chocolate crepe, lightly dusted with cocoa shavings and sugar, with chocolate sauce inside. These are delicate pancake packages I am presented with, the edges neatly folded at the top and bottom like a present. When Meg was eleven we went to Holland, and there the crepes were big and round as a dinner plate, the ingredients cooked into the batter, chunks of meat or chocolate pieces the size of a penny. I think she ate a chocolate crepe every day! I have eaten lobster for Devon, but I eat the chocolate crepe for Meg.

I walk the back streets again, and read the posted menu of services for one of the thalassotherapy clinics. There are salt scrubs and algae body masks, and a massage with oysters and rose petals. Oysters? Sounds awful! Oh…I have mixed up the words huitres and huiles (oyster and oil)…it is a massage with OIL and rose petals. That’s better. Lots of French words vary by only a letter or two, and sometimes I just see what I expect to see. The first week I was in the Loire I saw these big stores that I thought were electrical supplies because the name was E.Leclerc. My “American” eye saw electric…but they were grocery stores!

The tide is out so I walk across the wet sand past tidal pools of shells and strands of wavy sea greenery. I find a private niche in an island of rock, a stony throne for me to sit on, already warmed by the sun. I have brought a book by the same author as “Chocolat”, Joanne Harris, and it’s very good (“Five Quarters of the Orange”). I take my shoes off and rub my toes across the ridges and valleys of the rocks, feeling the differences with my toes between the sharpness, the indentations, and the mounds worn smooth by the crashing waves, like Braille for the feet. There is something completely freeing about taking my shoes off. My mother said when I was 4, I always came home without my shoes on, and she would walk the neighborhood until she would find two little shoes neatly placed on someone else’s steps or outside their back door. I stay until I hear the 6 o’clock bells ringing.

On my way back, I look in some of the shop windows and admire the “striped”wares, they are very big on that here! There are striped boatneck shirts and canvas bags, sweaters, baby’s hats and socks. Three young French people approach me, two boys and a girl, and I am wary at first. What do they want, are they begging…? because I am the softest touch around, and can be spotted at 90 paces. Even in a crowd of 1000, people come to me for directions, or a handout. I still haven’t decided if this is a blessing or a curse, but they are very nice and only want to know where the grocery store is. They immediately switch to English after I tell them I don’t know, and I laugh because they say they will ask the “inhabitants” (said like een-abb-a tants) instead, the “indigenous”(enn-deej-jin-us). I completely understood what they meant, but we don’t say it that way, we would say “locals”. I realize that is probably what my French sounds like to them…they understand me, but I don’t use the right word or the proper slang, which immediately pegs me as a foreigner.

I look in a mirror when I get back to my room, and my cheeks are rosy from the sun. My skin likes the moist air here, and I think I’m getting younger! I would love to come back here for a vacation.

Some things I have observed:

The French are very respectful to their friends and family. They always stop and shake hands and air kiss the women. When I was in Carcassonne standing on the Pont Vieux, there was a park with jogging paths along the river below me and I saw two men jogging from opposite directions. As they passed they “hello-ed” and clasped hands, their feet still pumping in place, and did a little slow motion handshaking do-si-do, their running momentum carrying them in a little circle until they reached their original spots and jogged away. I think it would be very hard if you were in a hurry. You’d have to plan air kissing and handshaking into the schedule, or you’d never be on time.

French people purse their mouths when they talk, like when a child puckers their lips for a kiss from grandma. They also have a gesture, a puff of air that they make through pursed lips, like a French “raspberry”…poof…which means many things, but is usually derogatory, such as in : 1) I don’t care, 2) you are too stupid for me to explain, 3) this is too much bother and I’m done with you, 4) too bad, 5) go away. Fortunately no one has done this to me, yet.

They are very environmental here. They recycle, and there are public recycling cans for your glass, plastic and newspaper to make it easier. They use windpower and sometimes in the distance you see the tall white towers with a propeller twirling around. A new law going into effect soon will no longer allow grocery stores to hand out plastic bags. Bring your own canvas bag!

There isn’t much limestone here in Brittany, or caves (or trogolydytes). But there are lots of forests, which explains the half timbered houses, and the whitewashed stucco look.

Most of the houses in Brittany that are built of stone, are really old, or farmhouses. The farmer probably picked every one of those stones out of his field!

In every town so far, there is a street , square, hotel or bar named after 1) Jean Jaures, 2) General De Gaulle, and 3) Gambetta. I know who De Gaulle is, but who the heck are these other two? I will have to check this out.

And speaking of naming things after people…the garbage can is named after a past minister of france…”poubelle”. Isn’t that cute? It sounds so much more charming to say “ Mon cher, prends-tu la poubelle la-bas” (take out the trash)!